


Secrets of the Imperium

by Mistresskabooms



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: F/F, Female Space Marines because fuck that sexist ass transphobic ass canon, In which I make canon my bitch, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-09-01 20:43:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20264236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistresskabooms/pseuds/Mistresskabooms
Summary: Ever since she was a little girl, Gloria had always wanted to be a Space marine.





	1. A girl named Gloria

Ever since she was a little girl, Gloria had always wanted to be a Space Marine

She had first seen them on the holonet, marching alongside the soldiers of the Astra Militarum in a parade broadcast across the sub-sector. Seeing these giants among men walking alongside her brothers and sisters of the Imperium filled her with awe. When she learned that only men could become Astartes, she was inconsolable, and later, confused.

They told her that the female body could not survive the implementation of the Gene-seed.

But what if someone like her friend Kara, who was born a man, were to become one? What would happen then? 

The reply she got was confused silence.

Ok. So she couldn't be a space marine. Maybe she could be a Sister of Battle?

She decided against it after she learned that their devotion to the Emperor bordered on Fetishistic Fanaticism. Sure, the Emperor was great and all, but she wouldn't want to have a body pillow of him.

She never got to make that choice.

As soon as she was old enough, she was conscripted into the Imperial Guard, shipped offworld away from her friends and family to fight someone else's war.

Her official training had simply been on which end the Lasgun goes.

Her gear was simply a flak jacket, which wasn't much better than just wearing nothing at all.

She was always sent to the frontlines, the ever present threat of a commisar executing her for stepping a toe out of line was the only thing keeping her on the battlefield.

Any friendships she made never lasted long. They would either be killed in battle, or by the diseases that ran rampant in the camps. She only survived through dumb luck and spite. She would not die. She wouldn't give the bastards that put her there the satisfaction.

Out of all the enemies she had to face, she feared the Tyranids most. They knew no fear. No morality. Just relentless, insatiable hunger. They devoured everything in their path.

However, she persisted. She learned the ins and outs of her weaponry. She learned how to kill, despite her weak armor and weapons. Eventually, she was promoted to sergeant, and then lieutenant, even being allowed to have a Plasma rifle. But, perhaps most tragically, she learned to accept that she was never going home.

Gone was the little girl with lofty dreams. In her place was a hardened soldier.

Her most recent deployment was to the front lines of Listinia, a feral world, in order to deal with an orc infestation. She always dreaded these ones. Because it was always a matter of whether or not they had sent enough men To repel the green tide.

They didn't.


	2. The Forgotten Ones

From the moment they set foot on Listinia, Gloria knew it was a losing battle. For starters, what defenses remained of the PDF were laughable at best. If she didn't know any better she would have guessed that they wouldn't be able figure out which end of the Lasgun goes where. But she knew better. Most of these people were emergency draftees, often given little to no training and told to fight off an unstoppable killing machine.

Of course, she was smart enough to never utter a word of this out loud. She knew the consequences for stepping a toe out of line.

So she soldiered on, setting up the defenses for what she believed would be their last stand.

On the bright side, they had the terrain on their side. They were at the edge of a large city nestled up in the mountains, there was only one way in, and the gates that protected it were still in good condition. With a couple heavy weapons teams and squads of guardsmen, as well as a team of Basilisk heavy artillery guns, they could make that pass into one hell of a choke point. If nothing else, they would at least go down taking a few of them with 'em.

When all was said and done, all they needed was to wait.

Gloria was focused. Her plasma gun ready, her feet were dug in. She was ready.

"Do you think we can take them?" Asked a young private.

"Those greenskins don't stand a chance! We'll show those filthy aliens what the imperial guard are made of!" Responded another private, lifting his Lasgun into the air as if it were some kind of war trophy, which got a hearty roar from the other guardsmen. Gloria couldn't help but smile at their bravado. 

That's when it began. A dull rumbling echoed throughout the mountains, silencing most of the guardsmen. So many of the guardsmen who were moments before giving a hearty battle cry were now murmuring to each other. The rumbling grew louder. The murmurs turned to whispers and nervous laughter. A single bead of sweat fell down Gloria's face as the rumbling crescendoed into a thunderous roar of footsteps and battle cries.

The guardsmen atop the walls answered back with an impressive hail of fire, creating a thick field of suppressing fire that claimed hundreds of Orks within minutes. Artillery shells whizzed in the air as they flew towards their targets with explosive force. Any regular foe would have been crushed under this unrelenting show of force.

But the Orks were no regular foe.

Orks with makeshift rockets strapped to their back soared onto the wall, coming down on the guardsmen there with force. Gloria just barely managed to avoid being crushed by one of them, rolling out of the way and blasting its head off with one well placed shot. She fired at another such Ork, hitting the rocket the Ork had used to soar atop the wall and sending it hhaywire. The Ork flew wildly as it suddenly burst in midair. More and more began to land, and despite the fact that she had claimed many of their lives, it was still not enough, and She found herself face to face with an Ork much bigger than the others. She had been told that they were called Nobs (a name which she laughed at for days on end.) She stared it down as it took a swing at her with a power Klaw, which she nimbly avoided before firing at it, missing twice before the beast swung again, this time slicing her plasma gun in two. The resulting explosion sent the both of them flying backwards.

Gloria hit the ground hard. Her vision was cloudy, and she felt something warm and moist flowing from her head. Her ears were ringing, but she swore she could hear the thud of power armor and the boom of bolter fire. The thing she was most acutely aware of was that her legs were in agonizing pain. Vision returned to one of her eyes as she stared down at her legs. "Oh... Shit..." She muttered out loud. Her legs were badly burned, shrapnel from the plasma rifle embedded deep into her flesh. Bits and pieces of her bones were exposed.

To make things worse, the Nob was standing up. She heard a deep, gruff laugh come from him. "Now dat wuz a big boom! Real fun, dat wuz!" He looked over to her. And he laughed. "An' 'ere I thought you wuz all tuff! I sawz wot you did to me boyz! Made some real big booms! I wuz gonna put yer skull on top of me stikk!"

Gloria looked around her, looking for anything within arms reach. As fate would have it, the Lasgun of a fallen guardsman was in arms reach. She grabbed the gun, bayonet fixed, and fired at the Ork. The shots bounced harmlessly off of his ratchety honor, and earned her another laugh from the Nob. "You still got some fight in ye! I respect dat, humie." He charged at her, ready to deliver the killing blow. Gloria thrust her Lasgun's bayonet into his open mouth. As she pushed it deeper and deeper into his skull, she fired, and did not stop firing until all that was left of his skull was a bloody pulp. The nob's corpse collapsed next to her. She laid back, breathing heavily as everything became fuzzy. She saw the faint outline of multiple ships landing by the city gate as she continued to bleed, fighting in a desperate battle to stay conscious, crawling along her hands until she was too weak to even do that. She heard a specific set of clanging footsteps march towards her. She raised her head just enough to see the power armor of an Adeptus Astartes. She gave a faint smile to her supposed savior before She dropped her head back down. She felt her body being lifted up the ground by the Astartes and draped over one of his shoulders

"Th-thank you..." She croaked out.

"Save your strength, little one." The Space marine responded, in a deep, but undeniably feminine, voice. "This is no place to die."

"Wait... Y-your voice... Are you..." Gloria faded to unconsciousness before she could register what she heard.


	3. Awakening.

The first time she woke up, all she could see were blinding lights. Her ears were still ringing and pounding in her head, but she could just barely make out the faint talk amongst a pair of women. She tried to make out what she heard, but she could only pick up fragments of what they were talking about.

"... in saying this, Sister Apothecary, but..."

"... Her choice to make..."

"... But she's just a simple..."

"... Reports brought in by... Very impressive..."

"... But what if she..."

"... Then we will..."

She couldn't pick up any more after that. 

No longer under the influence of Adrenaline, the full extent of the damage was finally felt. 

And it hurt. It hurt So. So much.

She screamed, tensing up her hands as she cried out in a desperate plea to the emperor to end the pain.

As if the emperor answered her plea, a small pinprick into her arm brought about an overpowering sense of drowsiness as darkness overtook her once again.

\--------

The next few days went by in a blur, Gloria drifting in and out of consciousness as she teetered on the brink of death. She couldn't move, nor could she see clearly. She couldn't feel her legs, nor her right arm. Instead of pain, all she felt was numbness. Everything was still so blurry

And she hated it. The feeling of being helpless, trapped inside her own body with no escape, save from death. She hated the fact that her family will likely never know what happened to her. All they'll know is that the letters stopped. She hated the fact that after months of fruitless attempts to contact her, they would eventually come to the realization that she was never coming home. 

Without the distractions of Battle and life, So many thoughts that Gloria had suppressed, buried deep, deep down for the sake of her own wellbeing began to resurface. Thoughts of home. Thoughts of the beautiful rolling fields and the clear blue skies. The calm rivers and the trees the size of skyscrapers. She missed her friends. More than anything, however, She missed her girlfriend. She hadn't heard anything from her since she left. All that her parents told her was that she joined the Imperial Guard not long after.

The only thing that granted her respite from these thoughts of home were her frequent lapses into unconsciousness.

\--------

It was two weeks before she could move again, her Vision and hearing returned. 

She sat up atop her bed, taking in her surroundings. There was gurney on either side of them, medical tools meticulously placed and organized into categories she couldn't even begin to understand. The air was dry and sterile, so much so that breathing in seemed to leave her mouth just as dry. She tried to stand up, finally getting a look at her legs for the first time. Where once there was flesh and bone and blood lay a skeletal framework of metal and wires. She reached one of her hands down to touch it, trying to affirm whether or not it was just some nightmare, only to find that that hand suffered the same fate. Her breathing quickened as her remaining arm trembled at the revelation. "No..." She muttered. "This has to be a dream! This can't be real!" Tears streamed down, but only on one side of her face.

In her shock, however, she failed to notice a figure in power armor had entered the room until it gently placed a hand upon her shoulder. She jumped at the touch, before looking up at the source. It was huge. Too huge to be anything else but an Astartes. The figure took of its helmet, making Gloria's jaw drop.

It was a woman.


	4. It's a long story.

Gloria's mind was overwhelmed with a barrage of thoughts and new information. She could barely put together coherent thoughts. The only thing that came out of her mouth was a jittery "A-are you a... A space marine?" At this point, she was fairly certain that the armor clad woman Before her was, in fact, an Astartes.

The woman laughed, seemingly amused by this display in frint of her. "I am... Kinda?"

"Only kind of? How can you be only kind of a Space Marine. You either are one or you're not."

That response earned her a smile. "Well. It's a long story. But let's start with introductions. I am Diana Argentum. Captain of the 3rd company of the Starseekers." She extended her hand to beckon for a shake of the hands

"Gloria Proelium. Fire Support Lieutenant of the 16th Listinian Falcons." Gloria responded by extending her own mechanical hand, before pullung back, opting instead to use her fleshy one. Her hand was dwarfed by the giant's, but she shook it surprisingly gently.

"Alright. With introductions out of the way, I'm sure you have plenty of questions for us. I'll be more than happy to-" a rumbling explosion cut her off. "What the hell?"

Alarms began to blare. As a mechanized voixe spoke over the intercom: "Warning! Intruders on board! Warning! Intruders on board!"

Diana growled. "Stay here, and stay out of sight!" She put her helmet on before rushing out into the corridor.

Gloria nodded, hiding beneath the hospital bed, lying prone on her stomach as she peered into the corridor.

She couldn't see much from under the bed, only footsteps. Her hearing, however, picked up a slightly clearer story of what was going on. Because now she knew that bolter fire was involved!

In all honesty, she didn't know what she expected there.

She should probably at least try and help... But these are space marines! They're worth like... A hundred of her! But still... She couldn't just sit by and do nothing. She rolled out from under the bed and rushed out into the corridor.


End file.
